Blog of Dr. Miland Brown that features different aspects of world history. Not everything can be covered but sites dealing with any historical issue or topic are possible future posts. Also includes sites which discuss teaching history. Dr. Brown is an academic in North America.

Monday, October 03, 2005

The Glory of Byzantium

The Glory of Byzantium - An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrating the second golden age of Byzantine art. Includes Byzantine art themes, the history of Byzantium, and a visual timeline.

The exhibit is long gone (it ended in 1997) but the musuem has left up a lot of neat stuff. This includes a neat collection of tips and lesson plans for teachers and a glossary.

From the site:

The Byzantine Empire, founded when the capital of the Roman Empire was transferred from Rome to Constantinople in 324, existed in the eastern Mediterranean area until the fifteenth century. The arts and culture of this "New Rome" continued the pan-Mediterranean traditions of the late antique Greco-Roman world, setting the standard of cultural excellence for the Latin West and the Islamic East. The results of the cultural development of the Byzantine Empire during these centuries has had a lasting impact on such modern nations as Albania, Armenia, Belorus', Bulgaria, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, Rumania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Syria, Ukraine, and Turkey.

2 comments:

I agree with you. I will add though that the Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman state. The Byzantines considers themselves Roman until the end and they referred to their state as being Roman. As such, the range of this state goes from the rise of the Roman Republic until the fall of Constantinople in the 15th Century.